First of all, today was the first day of snow, and as everyone knows, that’s the day you don’t leave home until winter is over. If you don’t have enough provisions to last until thaw, try luring unsuspecting birds in through the window – or if you’re vegetarian like me, use a fishing rod to hook the groceries right out of pedestrians’ hands. It’s not stealing if they can’t see you.
So now that I’m safely ensconced indoors for the next five months, I finally have time to recap what’s been going on lately. And on things have been going, oh yes!
BERLIN’S SKY IS GREY, NOT BLUE
First of all, I am actually on social media. I’ve been on Mastodon for a couple years now, and I joined Bluesky several months ago, Before It Was Cool. And now that everyone has apparently been driven away from Twitter by some lump of sentient racist ham, I’ve been gaining a lot of new followers. You can follow me too, and enjoy the sight of my face painted with bright, shiny colours.
I also post about other things, but they’re mainly just filler in between each lusciously-rendered vision of my dazzling eyelids.
HUGO, GIRL! (HOW DID I ONLY JUST GET THIS PUN?!)
As long-time stalkers will know, sometimes I like to talk to people. Real actual people, who probably exist and aren’t just the embodied personifications of repressed emotions. Some of these flesh-and-blood people were the lovely cast of the Hugo, Girl! podcast, Lori, Haley, and Amy. We discussed Ursula Le Guin’s classic novel The Dispossessed, as well as my concept of ambitopia and how it relates to my book Proud Pink Sky. My publisher even made this lovely graphic for the event!
You can listen to the episode here.
ADVENTURES IN WASHINGTON D.C.
I was recently in the U.S. capital, staying with a dear friend of mine and visiting monuments that honestly could do with a dab more colour. Just think of it: the Capitol building in retro ’90s lime green, the Washington Monument in a kaleidoscope of neon, Statue Lincoln of the Lincoln Memorial in vivid, fleshy tones. Why does everything have to be in white?
While I wasn’t scaling national monuments with a bucket of paint in hand and a lot of people screaming at me (rude), I had the chance to visit the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library – where I was touched to find a copy of Proud Pink Sky. I joke a fair bit on this blog, but here’s a rare shard of sincerity: it means a huge amount to me that my book about trans and nonbinary oppression is in such a beautiful location. It was wonderful.
IT’S IN MY NATURE
Finally, I have a lovely piece of news: I have another upcoming story in Nature Futures, the science fiction section of the journal Nature. It will feature alongside a piece on the inspiration for the story, and I’ll be sharing more news when I have it.
That’s all for now! Join me next time when I’ll be precariously dangling from my window, attached to a fishing line that’s somehow become caught on the back of a speeding bus.
Until then, Snow Fearers!
– Redfern